by Massive Voodoo

Well,
the jungle is quite silent these days.

Maybe its because of the recently passed silent night of Christmas and the magical time that happens between Christmas and New Years Eve. A time to rest, relax and readjust yourself, your lifes, your love, your happiness. For some a time to look back on a beautiful 2017, for others a time to look back on a confusing 2017, maybe. People, life, stories and experiences are always different from person to person. Nonetheless 2017 will be gone in some brief days. No matter what 2017 made with you, remember it made you progress. To be a better you, a better version of yourself on the future tracks of your journey as you. We hope that 2018 will bring you closer to what you search for yourself and to what you seek in life, but mainly we wish all our readers and their loved ones tons of health for the new year and a smooth transition into the new year!

Always remember:A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Happy new year to you all!And see you for massive jungle madness in 2018. Our plans are so big, we are not sure if the jungle is big enough. Muahahahaa!

Enjoy winter and read you in the new year with exciting news, fascinating content, goals with plans and precise figure painting madness :)

by Massive Voodoo

MV wishes Merry Christmas

Today the Massive Voodoo Team wants to wish all of our readers, family and friends a Merry Christmas. The monkeys are swinging back to the deep jungle for a well deserved christmas holiday.

After a crazy and intense year we want to thank all of you for the support and the love we are receiving through comments, emails and personal encounters.
We will be back in 2018 with more awesome stuff, till then it can be a good and healthy thing to recap the year. Try to be thankful for what you have, smile more than usual, try to be the best version of yourself. Enjoy family and friends, give yourself a break from the internet and social media, enjoy the moment and have a wonderful time.

by Roman aka jar

Good Morning Jungle,

again it is time for another finished project.
This time I had a client - not out of the miniature community - but a person who has never seen a painted figure before. A waitress in one of my favourite restaurants in Augsburg. It is close to the studio that is why you might find me there once in a while after a hard days work. She one day asked me what I am doing as work as I am often eat dinner there with my private coaching students and they talk all sorts of different languages. As an answer to her question I brought her some of my miniatureart postcards as a gift and she asked me if she could visit the studio one day.

She was visiting and enjoyed this absolute new miniature world a lot. She came up with the question about Dragons. Her husband is and loves dragons and if I could do something for his birthday that would be a very special present. I said yes and Khaarzul by Artefakt Miniatures was the perfect bust. So cool dragon bust available there and the sculptor Winton is truely talented. If you like dragons, this is the place to look now and in the future.

It all came down to an in time finished and unique birthday gift. A powerful and dark dragon was my clients wish. One that looks to be able to show some anger, but at the same time endless wisdom as he had seen worlds burn and collide. Some on his wrath. Now her husband wants to visit the studio too :)

by Peter aka Baphomet

Hey jungle,

another primarch is finished! The Lord of the Ultramarines was an interesting challenge, not due to the miniature itself, but more because of the base. He was the fourth primarch I painted and due to my commission, there are a lot more to come :)

As part of my preparation for new projects, I spend some time on Pinterest and collect a lot of inspirational pictures. I like the idea of having different galleries for different projects, so I made one for Roboute, too: https://www.pinterest.de/peter5856/roboute-gulliman/

Painting an Ultramarine is not too hard, as you have tons of good reference material (I prefer the Forgeworld Illustrations) and blue is not the worst color to paint (which might be a more subjective opinion). Additionally, fitting for a Lord of a Space Marine Legion, Guillaume is covered with a lot of ornamental stuff, which makes it a easy to play with the blue/gold combination in order to achieve a glorious appearance. In my opinion, the most challenging part was painting the marble. I have tried to paint marble in the past and was never really satisfied. It never really looked like it, more like some dirty white area. This time I used my reference material to understand what is happening there and which are the most important "aspects" to make marble look like marble. Perhaps I write an additional tutorial, but for the first start I can recommend Raffa´s good and fast approach: CLICK.

As you can see on the pictures below, I chose a reddish marble in the end, which was a more spontaneous idea. At the beginning I was going for the standard white marble, but realized soon that it looked boring and made the whole project appear as grey. I´m more happy with the colorful version.

by Roman aka jar

Good Morning Jungle people,

what makes the jungle of Massive Voodoo so special is not only unique competitions or finished figures. It is mainly the big selection of articles that help painters around the world to increase their toolbox. We did not write many articles in 2017, but here is another one of a recently finished figure:

I AM BATMAN!

Knight Models, 32 mm

This article is meant to be a step by step, but without color recipes as I mainly mix all I need from primary colors by Schmincke, Primeacryl. It is meant to be a walkthrough showing my steps, giving you insight into my mind and maybe some explained decisions will be understandable.

I primed the dark knight black, very dark

Did I tell you that I am a big Batman fan?
I draw him once in while, often not on purpose. It just happens.

I hand out Batman patches if the pain is too hard to bare.

I make cookies in this shape.

And I painted straight white Titanium white, thinned a little bit with water to my black basecoat to understand shapes and volumes. Kind of the same what the 2k priming method does, but not the same as have more control. The first layer of white dries greyish and you can continue and intense a light situation and your volume study. A painting technique called Grisalle. First shown and explained to me by magic man, Alfonso Giraldes aka Banshee.

Now I use white again and make it stronger. This does not mean I am always using this approach when doing a figure. It is is just a tool in my toolbox.

In this stage the base somehow found how it wanted to look like. Just in black and white, but hey I like that!

Volumes defined and even edge highlights added.

Allright, maybe too much words and photos about priming. Now I sprayed everything blue. The contrast I have painted still visible.

I put a wash of inktense black by Scale75 all over the model to get its deeper areas darker. I let it dry and the base found new character in this step.

When dry, the Dark Knight again looked very dark.
I even added normal black and painted it in the deepest areas on larger surfaces where the wash of ink did not cover (a wash of ink, now this describtion I love). And I painted whatever I have painted to the base. Maybe I was thinking about illustrated rain on a rooftoop in a Batman comic I once saw or I just followed the rythm, I do not know.

Very wild. That is how I like my painting in the beginning. To dig out the beauty from a free sketchx way. Lot's of digging ahead.

Even darker in the big photobox, but more natural than the smartphone photos.

Back at the table the bat recieved some dark blue greys again on the cape mainly. I call this step cleaning up.

Went a little crazy with it and was going all tourquoise dark grey blue something all over. #happens

Still my basic sketch with white helps me to guide me, while I did out the beauty.

A photo in the unlighted wip shelve in the studio. He looks very greenish here, but I love the level of detail already. Sharp definitions.

Back at the table - on another random painting day - I increased the contrast of my blues again and added gently more white to my highlights until I recieved pure white for final dots and maximum edge highlights.

I then sprayed a glaze of blue back into it to pull it all together and tint it more blueish again.

And this is how the Dark Knight turned out in the end:

I really enjoyed doing my first Batman figure. I will do more. As a Batman fan I have to.
This figure is in private collection and the bat will watch over a city I one day want to visit :)
Thank you for your support in my work, art and passion, Sir!

by Massive Voodoo

Hey jungle,

we are very busy at the moment, as a lot of things are going on. Christmas is almost upon us and so, the MV-crew is working hard on finishing their commissions in order to send them on time to their clients. Further, Peter is moving back to Augsburg and has already claimed his seat in the studio.

But, even as we fighting our way through the last weeks of the year before claiming some free days, we want to remind you of the Seminar Roadmap 2018. Perhaps some of you might be interested in getting a voucher for Christmas?

Especially the Basing Class (Download PDF) in February might be interesting for our international friends. The final date for registration (mid of January) is closing fast. Just check the review on the last class and get inspired.

In case you want to join one of the classes or if you have any questions, feel free to send Peter an email: baphomet--at--massivevoodoo--dot--com

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Welcome to the Jungle...

... MASSIVE VOODOO’s jungle, where some apes share their thoughts and ideas around their beloved passion, the hobby of miniature painting and sculpting.

Feel welcome to come and check the jungle for tons of articles, interesting tutorials, creative competitions and the simple joy of happy painting hidden behind every tree. We hope that everyone finds their own banana in here, if not do not hesitate to ask the apes. We are more than happy for you to post in the comments section to help turn this jungle into the lush, overgrown painting corner we hope it will become.